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When large chunks of the team behind any big-name property -- Medal of Honor, GoldenEye, or Fire Emblem -- splits off to form its own company, the splinter group's first effort has a funny way of resembling its predecessor to some degree. Call of Duty, for example, or TimeSplitters, or Tear Ring Saga. So too is the case with Spy Fiction, the new game from several members of the team behind Metal Gear Solid. But if Sammy Studios' new stealth game doesn't exactly prove that the MGS feel revolves around Hideo Kojima, it does prove that it's pretty hard to compete without his presence.

Bad Cover Version

Like listening to a cover band doing tributes to their favorite songs, there's a lot that seems familiar, yet somehow off, about Spy Fiction. The gadgets, for instance, come up the same way as in Metal Gear Solid -- just hold R1 to access a sliding menu -- but that one menu serves as both your gadget, weapon, card, and map select screen. There are several things along those lines, such as the ability to swivel the camera while peeking around corners, which are different but harmless. Like driving on the other side of the street in a foreign country, it can be worryingly unfamiliar until it becomes second nature.

More hazardous is when the team gets really creative in their decision to change an element of the MGS formula. Sneaking, for one thing, isn't the key element of Spy Fiction -- you'll spend half your time walking around in broad daylight wearing a Mission: Impossible-style disguise. Like last year's Lupin the 3rd game (which had a similar disguise mechanic) you have to at least nominally act the part of whatever you're dressed as, but Spy Fiction doesn't quite think things through here.

For one thing, it's not always easy to tell when you're about to be spotted. The closer you get to another character, the more steadily an eye icon in the upper right will appear, but that doesn't always bear a clear relationship to whether or not they find you suspicious. Sometimes they'll pass right on by, and sometimes they'll decide to inspect you closely. If they do check you out, you'll pass inspection so long as you've got one more "C" icon remaining -- but if you're out of those, the game's afoot.

This in itself is a little more limiting than Lupin's system, but that just makes things harder, not necessarily worse. What makes it worse is that because of poor A.I. for the NPCs on the lookout for you, they'll check you over and over, even if you just went to go look at something two feet away and came back. The gameplay is full of illogical, nonsensical roadblocks like that, and the lack of proper cueing is a big obstacle in the path of playing intelligently rather than trying everything to see what the right path is.